THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY (FM3063)

Home>Academic Catalog 2024-2025>Course Catalog>

Documentary filmmaking enables a creative mode of inquiry about the world, a person, a landscape, an issue, or even ourselves. It encourages an open-ended layering of observations: visual, auditory, movement-based, historical and even fictional, as a rich backdrop to researching a topic. This workshop class will introduce students to a range of documentary video practices and impart technical skills to create their own documentary shorts. We will ask questions, watch, play, experiment, respond and explore how form contributes to content. We will engage issues in contemporary documentary practice from the avant-garde to commercial production as inspirations for your own inquiry into your ideas. Students will use research, framing, sound, duration, juxtaposition and different editing strategies to explore their ideas. While we will cover "traditional" documentary genres (interview-based, observational, essay, etc), we will also explore expanded and experimental documentary strategies.

Code: 
FM3063
Name: 
THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY
Discipline: 
FM (Film)
Type: 
Regular
Level: 
Undergraduate
Credits: 
4
Can be taken twice for credit?: 
No
Pre-requisites: 
CM1019CCI OR FM1019CCI OR CM1019CCDI OR FM1019CCDI OR CM1019 OR FM1019
Co-requisites: 
None

Learning Outcomes

  1. Students will be able to differentiate between different documentary styles.
  2. Students will be able to identify a mode of inquiry and develop a creative project that reflects the formal specificity of a documentary style.
  3. Students will be able to create final projects demonstrating integrated mastery of a range of skills (interview, camera, framing, research, sound, editing, lighting, expressive form).

Offering(s)

Term Code Name
Spring 2025 FM3063 THE ART OF DOCUMENTARY

Archived Syllabi